PLANTING DREAMS AUDIO GUIDE Bruce Pascoe on Peacock’s ‘Government House’ BRUCE PASCOE: This is early Sydney. Government House in the background, bit of smoke from the chimney, bit of industrialisation happening, as well as people at their leisure in the park-like surroundings. It’s like a bit of triumphalism that the land has been wrested away from the original owners and now the city is back to its rights, the way the English would like to have it, and all the conflict is over. We’ve got leisure boats out on the water. Everything is good in the world. It looks like it’s Sunday and the early settlers of Sydney have mastered their situation, and are now in love with their city. The people of Sydney were proud of their Government House. They were proud of the gardens that they had established around it. You can see, in the foreground, some exotic plants, which the Sydneysiders saw as exotics. And, yet, the openness of this part of the city had probably always been like this and they had just introduced new plants to show that they had left their thumbprint on this land. But I always think back to the way Phillip described the land around Sydney and how manicured it was, how beautiful it was, how when people found the cow pastures, it was already an idyllic rural scene. These people thought they had created this new city in the southern hemisphere but, in fact, there had already been a city and a civilisation there. ((ENDS))